Russia's Best Defense Against Ukrainian Cruise Missiles Is A Rare Radar Plane
What happens when the Beriev A-50Us are all gone?
This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.
Russia has just a few Beriev A-50U radar early warning planes left. But those rare aircraft are still busy helping Russian air defenses detect and destroy Ukrainian missiles ranging deep inside Russia to strike strategic industries.
The four-engine A-50Us with their top-mounted radars may be the key to Russia’s deep air defense. But that unique capability cuts both ways.
The same Ukrainian deep strike forces that the A-50U crews are working to stop are also hunting the lumbering radar planes on the ground at their bases inside Russia. And once the A-50Us are all gone, there’s nothing to replace them—and Russian air defenses will lose their best eyes in the sky.
If and when that happens, more Ukrainians missiles will probably get through.
On July 4, the Ukrainian armed forces reportedly fired at least five Fire Point FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles at targets deep inside Russia. The six-ton missiles are among the heaviest and farthest-ranging Ukrainian deep strike weapons.
After many months of steady improvement by the engineers at Fire Point, the FP-5s are now reliably striking Russian targets with their 1,150-kg warheads. It seemed the five FP-5s that took flight on July 4 were on track to hit something in Votkinsk, in western Russia 1,400 km from the front line.
But the Russian air force intervened. FP-5s sneak past Russian air defenses by flying along river valleys and other natural obstructions that can shield them from detection by radar. But on July 4, the Russians positioned an A-50U and its powerful radar overhead of the Ukrainian missiles’ flight paths.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.
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